day, I stopped at one of the secondhand book stands and something I saw gave me a shock. It was an early printing of the Chi-ku-ko edition of the Shih-chi so-yin, which I recognized as having belonged to Lien-shu. He liked books but was not a collector. To him this must have been a rare edition that he would not have parted with except under absolute necessity. However free with his money he might have been, could it be possible that he had come to this only three months after he lost his position.^ Thereupon I decided to call on Lien-shu. I bought a bottle of kaoliang spirits, two packages of shelled peanuts, and two smoked fish heads.
The door to his room was closed. I called to him but there was no answer. I thought he might be sleeping, so raised my voice a bit, at the same time knocking on the door.
"He must have gone out," Big Liang's grandmother—that fat woman with triangular eyes—stuck out her gray head from the window across the yard and said in a loud and impatient voice.
"Where has he gone to?" I asked.
"Where has he gone to? How is one to know? But he cannot have gone far, so you might as well wait. He will be back by and by."
I pushed the door open and walked into the guest room. Truly, "an absence of one day is like three autumns. " The room was dismal and empty. Not only was there little furniture left, but of his books there remained only those bound in foreign style which no one in the city of S could possibly want. The round table was still there, the table which used to be surrounded by languid and sad-looking young men, neglected geniuses, and dirty, noisy children, but which was now so quiet and covered only with a thin layer of dust. I put
